For the past several years, I have told myself that I wouldn’t become one of those people who has to access Facebook, Twitter, email or even Google through a phone. However, due to a recent damage to my standard cell phone, I am now the slightly proud owner of a touchscreen phone. As most of us know, fancy electronics come with more fancy features that we aren’t usually seeking. In my situation, I entered my local Verizon store looking for one feature on a new phone: a QWERTY keyboard.

Within five minutes, I learned that my selection of QWERTY-keyboard phones was limited to BlackBerry phones, smartphones and several other advanced touchscreen phones. Due to my limited options and the clever sales techniques of my Verizon Wireless salesman, I now have a touchscreen phone complete with a media package that allows me unlimited access to the Web at any time.

As a new touchscreen phone user, I can’t help but find comScore’s study of touchscreen mobile phones very interesting because, this time, I’m part of the statistic. According to this study, mobile touchscreen phone adoption is up 159 percent from the past year. This number has considerably surpassed the already heavy increase of Smartphone users (63 percent from 2008 to 2009). Although the iPhone accounts for the largest single share of touchscreen users at 32.9 percent, the other top nine touchscreen models account for 47.2 percent of users.

As was the case in my conversion to a touchscreen, I’m sure many users were upsold a media package. This increase in touchscreen and smartphone users with unlimited access to the mobile Web has certainly had an effect on local mobile search. According to our recent Local Search Usage Study, local search conducted through a mobile phone has increased over the past year (up 11 percentage points from 2008), and, again, I find myself part of the statistic. In fact, just this past weekend, I found myself using my phone to Google the phone number of a local pizza place. I’m sure this usage will only continue to grow, and this is definitely a trend for marketers to stay aware of in the future.